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Here is the first in an occasional series of self guided meditations. These meditations are good ways to calm the mind, empty mental clutter and ease stress and difficult emotions. In them we use the breath as a tool and our imagination as our guide. Each meditation involves imagining sending a complete in and out breath cycle to paticular narrowly focused parts of the body. This time we'll work with:

THE HEAD

Begin by finding a comfortable seated position. Settle yourself into a place where your body can be relatively still.

Close your eyes and gradually bring your attention to your breathing. There is no need to change anything about how you are breathing.

1) Let your inner focus bring your attention to your nostrils- the place where breath enters and leaves the body. Take a breath into the space inside your nostrils and imagine a hollowness, a sense of spaciousness inside them. Notice any relaxation of tensions around the nostrils as you do this.

2) Now bring your attention to your sinus area at the bridge of your nose. Take a breath into the space inside your sinuses and imagine a hollowness, a sense of spaciousness inside them. Notice any relaxation of tensions around the sinus area as you do this.

3) Bring your attention to the part of your head immediately behind the center of your eyebrows. Send the next breath into this place and imagine a hollowness, a sense of spaciousness being created there. Notice any relaxation of tensions around this area as you do this.

4) Use your imagination to send your next breath right up into the top of your skull. Allow the breath to relax and dissipate any tensions there simply by imagining a hollow, spacious emptiness.

5) Using your imagination again, send your next breath to the extreme back of your skull. Image an empty space there, wide and tall and open.

6) There is frequently tension at the place where the skull joins the backbone. In your imagination send the next breath deeply into this area. As you breath in allow that place to be infused with airy spaciousness. As you breath out notice the letting go.